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by PasDeChat16
Summary: A final meeting, from two perspectives. Lily/Severus.
1. Lily

Disclaimer: Harry Potter does not belong to me.

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She feels him before she sees him. A heaviness spreads through the air around her, through her skin and bones, but it is not unpleasant. It reminds her of the moment that comes on the edge of sleep when action is unthinkable, but thought and sensation flow together, heightened and omniscient and united as they never are in daylight. It has always been that way with him, she thinks, and isn't sure whether to feel comfort that his presence is unchanged or to wish that he carried some brand that marked the horrible beliefs now lodged inside him.

It takes great effort, but she manages to speak. "I told you I don't want to see you."

She expects pleading and promises; she's almost glad when he speaks with a harshness he had abandoned while trying to win her back. "You're dating Potter."

She doesn't turn to face him. "Who I see has never been any of your business." _And it certainly isn't now_, she wants to add, but doesn't. She doesn't, because she's tired of indulging a jealousy she doesn't understand – what would he do with her if he had her to himself? It's been years since he has shown her anything but contempt. She imagines that possessiveness is now simply a hard-to-break habit.

She sometimes wonders if he had done this – done all of this – to prove that her mercy couldn't save him. To show that her compassion was more painful than any neglect he had withstood. But she never allows that thought to take hold of her, because it would mean acknowledging that he had cared enough for her to bother finding the ways to injure her that would shut her from him forever. She bears the damage he caused her easily, but the thought that love was sacrificed on both sides is intolerable. It is so much easier to think him cold and cruel.

His fingers graze her bare arm and she stops walking. They are standing under a tree, and the lacy shadows falling upon her skin are familiar to her. They used to sit here and talk, she recalls. She stills, wondering if their words are still here somewhere – echoes of laughter caught amongst the boughs. But it's difficult to believe that they ever brought each other happiness, and if those memories still exist, they surely do not belong to the two people who stand here now.

"Please," he says, "I'll do anything." His hand lingers on her arm, and the warm touch feels scalding in the cool breeze. She can't remember him ever reaching for her before, and perhaps it is that that finally convinces her to face him.

His hand falls away as she turns. "There's nothing you can do," she says, and for the first time, her voice softens and her eyes seek his gaze gently. "It's too late." She says the words automatically, thinking they are the kindest she has given to him since their falling-out – surely it is a comfort to him to be released from the burden of searching for that one act that will earn her forgiveness. But as she speaks, she hears a different truth – one that is only revealed to her as she gives it conscious voice. She forgave him long ago, when she saw his unhappiness on his chosen path – or rather, the path that he was pushed towards since his birth until he gave in and accepted what was easiest. But she's exhausted beyond measure from years of fighting to help someone who no longer knows or cares how to help himself, and she simply lacks the strength to do it any longer.

His fingers lock around her wrist, and the call is more powerful than any words. Her wrist twists in his hand to return the grasp. She thinks of the kisses she has traded with James – shy hints of lips amidst awkward, fluttering laughs. Somehow, the soft underside of his forearm beneath her palm is more intimate than any of these.

Her gaze clings to his face. It has been weeks since they've spoken, and although his features had not yet faded from her mind, she had forgotten the precise way in which they slipped and shaded from one expression to the next. He isn't attractive – at least, not handsome in the way that James is – but his face fascinates her in its familiarity. She knows that to most he appears utterly remore, but to her, he is like grass swaying beneath the wind as emotions ripple across his countenance. And suddenly, the full momentousness of their shared history crashes over her. She hopes that her life will never again become so tangled with another's, but the momentum of memory is undeniable, and her eyes fall shut.

His breath spreads across the surface of her face and she feels scarred – her cheeks flush in its wake – a trail of blood called forth by him. The air near her shifts, and she knows his lips are near her own, but all she can feel is the emptiness around her and the fever that stings just beneath her skin and the sudden stoniness of her body, and she sees death beneath her closed lids. She can no longer separate desire from fear. It doesn't matter though, because she's certain that whatever it is that is whispering to her of oblivion as she leans forward is unstoppable – especially if it is some force buried deep within herself.

But contact never comes. Fingers slip off her wrist, and she is still perfectly, painfully aware of herself as she opens her eyes to see him staring at the ground. She thinks fleetingly that if they had kissed, she would be utterly within his sway, and she wonders what it would be like to be little more than a dream born in his mind, floating through existence only when he summons it.

She shakes her head to clear it, reminding herself that she has earned the right to be selfish, just this once. She senses, now, that a moment and all of its successors have faded forever – she will never speak to him again, she thinks – not really. And surely it is for the best – she has won a life.

But as she walks away, she looks back over her shoulder. His downward gaze never wavers. And if this is selfishness, she wonders, why does it hurt?


	2. Severus

He sees her walking across the grounds and runs to catch up to her. For the first few weeks following their arguments, he followed her everywhere with his pleas, but she had eventually chipped away at his hopes just enough to convince him to leave their meetings to chance – because surely coincidence or fate or whatever she believes in is something she cannot deny.

He doesn't believe she will forgive him this time – he never really expected her to. But the truth, shameful as it is, is that suffering her scorn, for all the agony it causes, carries with it an unintended pleasure that her indifference does not. Her lips shape his name as no one else's ever have, even when it drops from them with heavy anger. The thought that one day his name might slip from her thoughts is unbearable.

"I told you I don't want to see you." The words startle him, not because of what they say but because of when and how she says them. Her voice flows monotonously from one word to the next, controlled and perfect in its dismissal. But what, he wonders, prompted her to speak after minutes of silence, if not the spread of some emotion to excruciating dimensions? The thought that she feels something encourages him.

"You're dating Potter." In the past, he had made the same accusation out of genuine jealousy. The same resentment still festers in him, but he speaks the words now because he knows the anger they will provoke. He thinks that if he can just bind himself to her fury, he might survive.

"Who I see has never been any of your business," she retorts, and he knows that it was always true, but that it's truer now, after everything he has done. He will never tell her why he has chosen what he has. He cannot admit that he knew from the beginning, knew at every irreversible step, that she was suffering because of him. He could argue that he had been caught like a leaf in a wind, blown helplessly forward by something infinitely more powerful, and it would be true. The trouble is, he thinks, that that momentum burns somewhere inside him. Because however much her tears burned him, each one was a victory. Each one was proof that he had harmed her before she could do the same to him, and each one buttressed the twin structures that let him live – an odd, passionate pride, and the most profound self-hatred.

The frail satisfaction her bitterness brought to him dissipates when he sees that she has stopped under the tree he has always thought of as theirs, despite the fact that their initials are nowhere to be found amongst the carved hearts that litter its trunk. He once took pleasure in the thought that their names could never be cheapened by association with those others, and pretended that that was why their names were missing from this monument. Standing here now, though, he wishes that their friendship – because it wasn't love they shared, he knows – had changed the contours of the world as these had. But the hours they had spent sitting beneath these branches had left no mark. If emotions left footprints, he wonders, could they slip away from us as softly?

It is the crushing presence of what has vanished that reveals a cruel simplicity to him; if he doesn't speak, she will leave, and if she leaves, he will be lost. "Please," he whispers, "I'll do anything." His hand falls on her arm. He wonders if this reminder can hold her.

She turns to face him, and it isn't right, he thinks, that she only grants him the warmth of her features and the caress of her voice to shatter him by saying, so kindly "There's nothing you can do. It's too late." He knows, as he looks at her, that her tender tone is utterly sincere, and that is even worse.

He reaches out blindly, thinking of nothing but delaying her for just one moment longer. He clutches at the wrist his hand brushes, and her pulse shudders beneath his fingers.

He is at her mercy, and it is too much to be believed when her own hand finds his arm and her eyes lift to meet his own. She searches his face longingly, and he wants to look away and beg her not to gaze at him like that – as if his plain features deserved a space within her memory. As if he mattered. Her lips part as if in realization, and a tear stutters down her cheek. The breeze fans out her hair behind her. Her eyes are ringed with red by now – she doesn't cry gracefully – but it doesn't matter. She has never seemed lovelier than now, with her face open before his.

Their faces are nearly touching when her eyes fall shut. He breathes in and out and tells himself to kiss her as she trembles. But he can't. Whether through trust or through surrender, she has somehow stripped him of his victimhood and placed herself within his power, and he hates her for it. He lets her go, and thinks bitterly that this is a true act of self-sacrifice – one that she will never recognize as such. It is all that he can offer her, because he wants to believe her his salvation, but knows that he would be her destruction first.

She opens her eyes and shakes her head, and he wonders if that is all it takes for her to rid herself of him for good. He looks up only once as she walks away, but her steps are even and assured, and he averts his gaze.

And years later when he thinks about her death, he doesn't imagine murder and blood - he remembers her red hair swing behind her with finality as she turned to leave him.


End file.
